As is increasingly common, one or more devices may wirelessly connect to a wireless local area network (“WLAN”). For example, a device may communicate over an air interface with an access point. The access point may in turn provide connectivity to one or more other networks, such as an intranet or the Internet. Using the connectivity provided by the access point, the device on the WLAN may communicate with a device on another network or with another device on the WLAN.
WLANs may be used in a variety of different environments, such as a home, office or other types of settings. By configuring a WLAN with one or more access points, devices may wirelessly connect to the WLAN from a variety of different physical locations. Thus, any device in range of one of the access points may potentially join the WLAN. While this may allow authorized users of the WLAN to conveniently connect to the WLAN, it may also allow unauthorized users to connect to the WLAN.
In order to limit access to a WLAN, the WLAN may use a unique identifier. Access points and devices that have the unique identifier can join the WLAN, while device and access point that don't have the unique identifier are not allowed access to the WLAN. By using a different identifier for each WLAN, a device would not be able to join a WLAN simply by being in range of an access point. The device would need to know the WLAN's particular identifier.
A device that does not currently know a WLAN's identifier, however, may still gain access to the WLAN by obtaining the identifier. This may be done, for example, by intercepting packets from one or more other devices communicating with an access point on the WLAN and extracting the identifier from those packets. Sometimes called sniffing, this process may allow a device to maliciously gain access to the WLAN. In order to minimize this type of unauthorized access, as well as other types of unauthorized access, the WLAN may employ various different security features.
One method of providing additional security is through using encryption. WLANs may use a variety of different encryption standards, such as Wired Equivalent Privacy (“WEP”) encryption. By using a key to encrypt packets traveling between the access points and devices, a malicious device would first need to obtain the key before decrypting packets, for example, to obtain the underlying data in the packet. Additionally, even if the malicious device obtained the identifier, it may still need to know the encryption key in order to communicate with the access point and connect to the WLAN.
In order to implement encryption, both the access points and the wireless devices must be configured for the particular type of encryption and the keys. Configuring these features may be a difficult process, requiring both access to the access points and the devices, and also requiring a working knowledge of how to reconfigure the access points and devices. Using encryption additionally restricts the movement of a device between WLANs, as the device must be reconfigured for the security features of each different WLAN. These problems, however, are not limited to encryption, but are common to the various different security features employed by WLANs.
Therefore, there exists a need to provide an improved method for implementing security features in a wireless network.